May 7th, 2010
Last week, Mozilla launched their plan of attack as one of the newest armies fighting in the mobile browser war. With application marketplaces such as Apple’s iTunes App Store and Google’s Android Market, there seems to be quite a bit of visibility for a large number of browsers in the mobile space. There are several big players and I wanted to compile a list, so that we can understand the scope of this new browser war:
- Google Android Browser
- RIM Blackberry Browser
- Dolphin Browser HD
- Mozilla Fennec
- Microsoft Mobile Internet Explorer
- Apple Mobile Safari
- Opera Mini
- Skyfire
(Please add any I’ve missed in the comments.)
UPDATE August 24, 2010: pocketnow.com has released a video comparing the browsers of iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 7.
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April 29th, 2010
I’ve been anxiously awaiting this app for quite some time and finally yesterday I was able to install Fennec, Firefox Mobile, on my Nexus One. A mobile browser built with ingenuity… it is clear that Mozilla will extend their vision of making the Internet public, open, and accessible onto the mobile, touch platform. With Fennec, they took their time and built an intuitive and well thought out mobile browser that is true to the Mozilla ideals.
Fennec on Android is instantly the best mobile browser on the market today. It came with some pretty specific “warnings and caveats,” but overall, it is a great explanation of what’s to come in the more mature releases. The interface is clean and simple, yet the browser has incredible capabilities. When you first open Fennec, you’ll see the standard interface for mobile browsers: location bar and homepage. The fennec location bar also acts as a quicksearch bar, utilizing default search engines: Google, Amazon, Twitter, and Wikipedia. Just as Firefox normally defaults to the Firefox Start page, Fennec defaults to the Fennec Start page. This page seems very similar in design and in function to the Firefox Start page, providing information about the browser, such as recently closed tabs as well as add-ons preferences.
The way Fennec handles tabs is where I see its true power. Simply swipe the current page to the right to reveal the tabs pane, which utilizes page thumbnails for each of your opened tabs. This method of tab selection allows Fennec to switch tabs with just one tap (swipe), rather than two or three taps to switch tabs through the menu systems of the Google Android Browser or Apple Mobile Safari, or even Opera Mini. (UPDATE: Dolphin Browser HD on Android has decided to copy this tab management system). Of course, the added bonus of Fennec’s excellent tab management is that Mozilla’s Weave project allows the syncing of open tabs between computers. I installed the Weave addon-on without any trouble (even on this very early beta) and it’s great to be able to pass my Web work from my PC to my Android, so that I can continue my train of thought from the office to home.
Bottom line, Fennec is a great mobile browser, but without the ability to set it as the default browser it just can’t compete with the default Android browser (or Dolphin HD or Skyfire). Im sure this will be resolved in the first non-beta, public release… so until then…
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Security in Dynamic Web Content Management Systems Applications
December 1st, 2009
The processes behind corporate efforts to create, manage, publish, and archive Web information has also evolved using Web Content Management Systems (WCMS). WCMS allow teams to maintain Web content in a dynamic fashion through a user friendly interface and a modular application approach. This dynamic “on-the-fly” content creation provides Web site authors several advantages including access to information stored in databases, ability to personalize Web pages according to individual user preferences, and the opportunity to deliver a much more interactive user experience than static Web pages alone.(reference) However, there are distinct disadvantages as well. Dynamically generating Web content can significantly impact Web server performance, reduce the scalability of the Web site and create security vulnerabilities or denial of service.(reference) Organizations are adopting information technology without understanding such security concerns.(reference) Moreover, as Mostefaoui points out, even though many attempts have been made to understand the security architecture, a generic security framework is needed. Recent research amplifies the concerns and benefits of security in open source systems.(reference) However, there is a need for organizations to understand how to evaluate these open source systems and this paper highlights how an evaluation technique in terms of security may be used in an organization to assess a short list of possible WMCS systems. This article focuses on security issues in WCMS and the objective is to understand the security issues as well as to provide a generic security framework.
The contributions of this paper are to:
- Integrate the goals of security with eight dimensions of WCMS,
- Specify how to secure the eight dimensions of WCMS,
- Formulate a framework of security using this integrated view of security goals and security dimensions,
- Address the security of the Web architecture at WCMS software application level using the framework and evaluate security features in popular WCMS used in the industry.
Communications of the ACM: Volume 52, Issue 12
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